


Snapshots of Undead Lives

by LadyZaniahStrangeling



Category: Being Human, Being Human (UK)
Genre: 1000 words and more, F/M, Mitchell angsting over the Wolf-shaped Bullet prophecy, supportive!Annie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-14
Updated: 2013-09-14
Packaged: 2017-12-26 12:30:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/965938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyZaniahStrangeling/pseuds/LadyZaniahStrangeling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in series 3. ' “Annie,” he says slowly, and when she looks at him he can’t meet her beautiful eyes, choosing instead to glance down at their fingers. He rubs his thumb over her knuckles lightly. Annie rests her chin on his shoulder, staring intently at him at waiting for him to continue. “Annie… why do you love me?”<br/>There’s a sharp intake of breath from the ghost beside him that’s let out in a heavy exhale, but his question is a valid one in his tortured mind. He doesn't understand why someone who’s as perfect as her could want someone so damaged and broken and diseased as him. He doesn't deserve someone as good as Annie, and she sure as hell doesn't deserve an animal like him. '</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snapshots of Undead Lives

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by [Myhin's](http://mhyin.tumblr.com/) lovely [Mitchell/Annie artwork](http://mhyin.tumblr.com/post/58757513518/mhyin-we-could-of-had-it), which was the basis for the final scene (and what can I say? I loved the stair scene from the show where these two are talking about Annie's failed sex idea, so I just had to incorporate more stair-sitting.).

They’re lying in bed when Mitchell asks, “Do you believe in fate?”

Annie’s icy fingers don’t stop the gentle patterns they are tracing beneath the hem of his shirt as she thinks about his question. The quiet, withdrawn edge to his voice tells her that he want a serious answer, though what type of answer the vampire is after is unknown to her.

Mitchell feels her fingers finally pause, and he finds that he suddenly misses the tender chill of her soothing touch. The bedclothes rustle as she raises herself on one elbow, peering down at him with a hint of confusion depicted in the creased frown between her eyes. Annie answers slowly, her voice as velvety as the morning sunlight that’s extending its fingers through the heavy curtains covering the window. “Yeah… Yeah, I think I do.” She gives a one-shouldered shrug, the grey material of her cardigan sliding down and the shoulder-strap of her white singlet peeking out. “I can’t see any other explanation as to how you and George and I found each other. I think it was meant to happen.”

Mitchell doesn’t say anything. There’s a tightness in his chest that was created by Annie’s words, and he feels like he can’t breathe. Snatches of phrases and fragmented memories swirl around his head like a hurricane.

 _You’re gonna be killed by a werewolf_ , Lia whispers, almost gleefully.

The bloody carnage of the train carriage.

 _You saved me!_ Annie cries as she jumps into his arms.

Carl sitting on the edge of his bed in the house in Bristol, wrapped head-to-toe in mourning black and clutching his hands, as if able to take comfort from the very body that betrayed him. _You think you’re free of it_ , he says. _But it finds you, all those years without it._

 _Tell her,_ his own conscious murmurs, the sound akin to the barest breath of wind.

The bloody carnage of the train carriage.

Tell _her._

 _A wolf-shaped bullet_ , Lia smiles as she mocks the action of a gun with her fingers.

_BANG!_

“But,” Annie continues, and the sound of her voice makes Mitchell flinch, rolling his head on the pillow to stare up at her.  “I also think,” and she stops here, biting her lip as she thinks about how to phrase her next sentence. “I also think that fate doesn’t always have the final say in how things turn out. That people are in charge of their own destiny to a certain extent.” She flushes under the intensity of Mitchell’s dark gaze. “Or… y’know. Something like that that doesn’t sound as stupid as what I just said.”

“No,” Mitchell says, reaching up to tug at a curl of her hair. All of a sudden he can breathe again, the hurricane’s gone, and Annie smiling cautiously at him makes all the difference in the world. “No,” he says again, “it didn’t sound stupid.” _Tell her._

The praise makes Annie blossom, and something sparks in her lovely brown eyes like fireworks as she leans down, tangling her free hand in the material of Mitchell’s shirt. She kisses him carefully.

 _A wolf-shaped bullet,_ Lia smirks, raising her mock gun to his eye level. She winks flirtatiously.

Mitchell kisses back, pulling Annie on top of him and rolling them over. She complies, arching up beneath his touch. He kisses hard, like the ghost of a woman beneath him can drink all the worries and memories of black addiction out of him with her tongue, burying them in an unmarked grave next to the toiled ground where her earthly body rests.

Lia pulls the trigger.

_BANG!_

*****

Annie’s words reassure Mitchell. They stop him from being paranoid for a while, and he makes a conscious effort to keep them at the forefront of his mind, chaining them there with bolts and locks. It’s a much nicer memory to think upon then some of the other toxic monsters that lurk in the shadows of his mind – the lust as red as the blood that fuels it, the drug-like high of bliss and that powerful feeling of owning the world.

But the paranoia slides back like a sheepish dog returning to its master when he closes his eyes at night, and if it isn’t for Annie’s new nightly activity of cuddling beside him in bed, resting her head on his chest that’s devoid of a heartbeat and watching over him as he sleeps, he doesn’t think that he’d be able to stop himself from mentally acting out various scenarios that involve a werewolf and his death. Her presence makes Mitchell feel safer, seems to chase away all the bad things until he’s left staring at a beautiful girl who doesn’t deserve the monster that he is.

And he’s not the only one who thinks that way.

He and Nina have never seen eye to eye on many situations. Their relationship is rocky at best, and Mitchell doesn’t know what’s more unsettling – how much power she has over his best friend or the fact that she was a complete stranger who worked herself into his inner circle, his sanctuary of a home, and made it her home too. He still doesn’t trust her, and he doesn’t think that he ever will completely. Nina is still learning about the world of shadows that was suddenly thrust into the spotlight; about the corrupt, soulless monsters that prey on innocents and things that go ‘bump’ in the night. She hasn’t been part of this shadow world long enough to forget her own human morals and sense of what is right and wrong and play by someone else’s rules.

(Mitchell steadfastly chooses to ignore the fact that not too long ago he would have been jealous of the wolf for her strong sense of morality - something that he’d hoped to achieve. But it’s hard to keep treading water when the anchors tied to your feet keep dragging you under the surface, he reasons.)

He catches her one night, in the kitchen talking to Annie, who’s washing dishes and humming to herself happily. Mitchell has been sent to get more beers from the large fridge by George, who has sprawled out on one of the couches in the living room, half-drunk already.

About to push open the double swinging doors, Mitchell pauses jerkily when he hears his name, cutting off his action in mid-air.

“Everything’s going okay with you and Mitchell then?” Nina asks cautiously.

“Of course!” Mitchell can hear the smile in Annie’s voice. “Why wouldn’t it?”

“I just…” Nina moves closer to Annie, plucking a plate from the ghost’s hands and putting it away. “I just don’t want him to hurt you, that’s all.”

Through the smudged and stained glass windows, Mitchell watches Annie choke out a surprised but indignant reply. “Nina!” She sounds shocked. “Why- why would you even say that?”

“Well.” The wolf’s voice trails off as she leans against the kitchen counter. She drops her voice. “He’s _killed_ people Annie.”

Annie frowns, shaking her head. “I _know_ that. But that’s not him anymore. He’s on the wagon, and he’s cut all his ties with the vampire world. Mitchell’s changed. Besides,” she says, a renewed confidence in her voice as she hangs up her dish cloth, “he’d never hurt me. He did _save_ me, after all.”

That’s Annie. Always able to overlook the bad things and find a spark of good in almost everyone, no matter how small that spark is. Mitchell closes his eyes and lets out a quiet sigh, the weight of his guilt depressing his tall posture as he continues to listen.

Nina bites her lip. “He _has_ changed, Annie. I’m not sure if it’s for better or for worse. He went nearly half-mad when you were taken from us. And you didn’t see him at the facility. He was a completely different… person.”

The hurricane starts up again in Mitchell’s mind.

 _Did you feel her go?_ Kemp asks menacingly. _Did you hear her scream as she was ripped from the world?_

 _And this is how you’re going honour her?!_ George screams at him in the flickering red light of the corridor.

“Nina.” Annie turns around and looks at the nurse. “I appreciate your concern,” and she’s talking slowly now, using the voice that says _this is really none of your business, and I consider the conversation now over, “_ but I’m _dead_. Mitchell can’t hurt me. And he won’t, I told you.” She makes to leave the kitchen by the main hallway.

“He can still break your heart,” Nina says quietly, the words dropping like stones in the silence. An icy fist sinks into Mitchell’s gut, grabbing his insides and twisting them painfully, forcing a sharp breath of pain past his dry and cracked lips.

 _If I’d intended to kiss you, I’d have put on some chap-stick first,_ he laughs at Annie in another house, in what feels like another time – fuck, another _life_. A fantasy that’s now blurring, a destination behind him that can’t be reached no matter how many times he turns around on the road and starts out purposefully towards it.

Annie freezes in the doorway, the tilt of her head showing that she’s heard the other woman’s words. An answer jumps to her lips, poised on her tongue, but Mitchell’s heard enough, pushing through the doors a little roughly. Both women flinch and stare at him as he tries to keep his gait light and his face as expressionless as a plastered wall. He doesn’t miss the dark look that Annie shoots Nina as her feet carry her over to where he’s rooting around in the fridge for the beers he promised George.

“Alright Nina? Annie?” Mitchell asks, his voice cracking roughly around the edges like brittle paper as he tries to keep it steady. Nina clears her throat and mutters an affirmative before excusing herself and leaving the kitchen. Annie doesn’t reply, but he feels her fingers on his back, pressing forcefully as if she’s trying to anchor herself to him. But what she doesn’t know is that this ship is sinking, and nearly all the lifeboats are full. Her chances to jump ship and save herself are getting slimmer and slimmer with each passing second.

“Annie?” Mitchell asks again, twisting around and bumping the fridge door close with a hip, each gloved-hand holding a bottle of beer. She throws herself forward, arms clasping tightly around his body and he stiffens in surprise before hugging her back, resting his cheek on her perfectly-curled hair and watching the condensation from the bottles drop like tears onto her grey cardigan.  “Hey,” he says softly. “What’s wrong?”

Annie’s reply is to tighten her arms, like she’s trying to twine their dead bodies together into one living being. Mitchell knows it won’t work – you can teach a vampire how to feel emotions and love again, but you can’t give him back his heart – yet he doesn’t say anything, relishing the tingling feeling that Annie incites in him with her touches.

“Promise me that everything will be okay,” she whispers. “That no matter what happens, you’ll never leave me.”

He presses his lips to her head. “I promise,” he says huskily, knowing that his words are as empty as his life before he’d met the girl in his arms.

*****

 When Mitchell wakes up, Annie’s smile isn’t there to greet him – a smile that’s a perfect substitute for the rising sun. She’s not in his room at all, actually, and that makes panic rise in his throat like bile. He’s gotten so used to her presence that any deviation from this new routine of hers makes him extremely anxious, and his mind instantly starts to reel with possible explanations – none of them ending well for his ghostly lover.

He violently kicks the covers off, and in his haste to get out of bed, his legs tangle in the cold sheets, their grasping fingers reluctant to relinquish their hold on him. He slips, his palms breaking his fall with a stinging slap that judders through his body. With a growl that’s rough around the edges and eerily similar to a sound he’s heard George make, Mitchell manages to rise to his feet with difficulty and makes a terrified dash out of his room and into the hallway, nearly tripping again on the hem of his sweat pants. Her name dies a breathy death on his lips when he rounds the corner of the hallway and sees the outline of her grey-clad body sitting about halfway down the stairs. The vampire comes to a jerky halt, heaving a sigh of relief and feeling his anxiety dissipate immediately. He slowly takes another step towards Annie, his hand coming up to rest on the peeling wallpaper and the rings on his fingers making a _clink_ ing sound as they knock together.

Though Annie’s heard him, she makes no attempt to turn around, letting Mitchell slowly descend the stairs until he’s carefully lowering himself onto the stair next to her. “Hey,” and his voice is as quiet as a sigh.

Annie plays with the large ring on her finger absentmindedly, though she turns her head to look at him. “Hey,” she whispers back. Any louder sound would feel wrong.

“You weren’t there when I woke up,” Mitchell says, and he hates the subtle hint of accusation hidden in the layers of his voice. “I just thought- ”

“I needed some time to think,” she says over the top of him, and he thinks that that’s both understandable and forgivable. “But I’m sorry if I worried you.”

They sit in silence – for how long, Mitchell doesn’t know. Annie takes his hand at some point, and he lets her play with their knotted fingers. He kisses her temple without thinking, and as he draws back a thought that has been plaguing his mind breaks through the barrier of the memory of that morning in bed together.

“Annie,” he says slowly, and when she looks at him he can’t meet her beautiful eyes, choosing instead to glance down at their fingers. He rubs his thumb over her knuckles lightly. Annie rests her chin on his shoulder, staring intently at him at waiting for him to continue. “Annie… why do you love me?”

There’s a sharp intake of breath from the ghost beside him that’s let out in a heavy exhale, but his question is a valid one in his tortured mind. He doesn’t understand why someone who’s as perfect as her could want someone so damaged and broken and diseased as him. He doesn’t deserve someone as good as Annie, and she sure as hell doesn’t deserve an animal like him.

“ _Mitchell_ ,” Annie sighs desperately. “How could I not? You’re- no, look at me while I tell you this. _Look at me._ ”

The movement becomes robotic when Annie’s cold fingers lightly support the underside of his stubbled-jaw. He still avoids looking at her, unsure what expression her face will display and too afraid to find out. But when Annie insistently says, “ _Mitchell_ ,” again he warily flickers his eyes upwards reluctantly, not wanting to hold her gaze but finding that like a hypnosis patient, he can’t look away. He wants to swallow, but his mouth is dry and depleted of the saliva that would coat his throat. It most likely dried up with the rest of his meagre courage.

“Why?” The word’s out of his mouth before he can stop himself. “If you knew, if you knew _half_ of the things that I’ve done- ”

Annie shakes her head, the swinging movement of her curls cutting off his words like a knife, but in truth, Mitchell never really wanted to finish that sentence. He didn’t know _how_ to finish that sentence.  

She presses her lips to his in a quick kiss, swallowing his protests with a delicious flick of her tongue. When the normally-vibrant ghost hesitantly pulls away, Mitchell can see love splashed through her eyes. And maybe his conscious is telling him that he shouldn’t question what they have – he should just accept it and be happy – but the ageless vampire can’t.  The question has been infecting his mind, devouring things like self-esteem and self-worth and plunging him into a depressive-like state that provides the evil thought of _why don’t I just give up?_   But if there’s one thing that Mitchell’s retained it’s his pride, and he refuses to let it beat him.

“You’re so brave. And kind and- and caring. Selfless, too – you did rescue me from _Purgatory_ after all.”  At this, she bumps their shoulders together and squeezes his hand. Mitchell uses the cold pressure to ground himself – the hurricane is throwing words around in his head that ricochet against his skull and bounce off the back of his eyeballs; words that counteract all of Annie’s.

_Stupid. Weak. Selfish – I just wanted you back so you could make me smile again._

 “And it’s not just me,” Annie says. “You were going to sacrifice yourself to save us from Herrick. You _would have_ , if George hadn’t interfered.” She lifts their clasped flingers and tickles a feathery kiss to his knuckles. “But I’m glad he did,” she whispers thickly, laying her head on his shoulder.

 _Selfish – everything was wrong and it was my fault. I wanted to die. I_ should _have died. And now, when I’m going to die, I don’t want to._

 _Tell her_ , his conscious murmurs.

“I love you,” Annie continues strongly, “because I know you’re a _good_ person. You’re not evil. I know that you can’t help giving in to the vampire inside you sometimes,” and for an awful instant, he thinks she knows about the bloody carnage of the train carriage, “but you’re _tyring_ , and that means everything. Especially to me.”

“Can you forgive me?” Mitchell asks softly, and he doesn’t know why he’s upset enough that he’s nearly on the verge of breaking in half and causing all his walled-up emotions to flood out like an ocean, drowning him and everyone else in sight. But his ghost has always brought out something in him that very few people have been able to do. He still doesn’t want to admit to himself that he killed the last person who could – drained the blood from her body to keep him alive; the blood that once fuelled the heart that loved him. But then again, she’d always been able to save him.

“What for?” Annie laughs shakily, half nervous about what his answer is going to be.

“For everything I’ve done.” Melancholy echoes in Mitchell’s voice, consuming his every being and clouding the air with sorrow and regret. “For everything I _will_ do.”

Annie’s eyes are veiled with the hazy fog of unshed tears, and she stares at him, pouring every inch of her love for him into the sigh of his name that escapes from her lips. Tightening the locked hold of his hand, Annie raises herself, slipping her free hand around his neck and fingering the soft curls that hug the nape of his neck. Gently, as so not to hurt him, she places a cold pressure on his skin and bends his head, the vampire complying to her actions and making his body pliable. A frozen kiss of love graces the skin of his forehead and Mitchell closes his eyes with a soft exhale. Annie doesn’t remove her tingling mouth, and Mitchell feels a gentle tear tumble from her lovely eyes – eyes that shouldn’t do anything but laugh – and land on his hairline. Though he’s not a religious person for obvious reasons, Mitchell thinks there is an almost holy atmosphere surrounding them.

He extracts his hand from Annie’s, and pulls her body close to his, breathing in the indistinct smell of perfume and spring and Annie that he sometimes thinks he imagines. He feels Annie return the hug with every inch of her being.

“I don’t deserve you,” Mitchell whispers hoarsely, “but _fuck_ , I love you.”

Annie sniffs, pressing a smile into his hair and imprinting her lips on his neck. “Everybody deserves something good in their lives,” she says quietly. “Even someone like you. _Especially_ someone like you.” She holds him tighter. “And I love you too. So, _so_ much.”

Mitchell closes his eyes tightly, preparing for the onslaught of the hurricane, for Lia to whisper with her mock gun about werewolves and bullets. But it doesn’t come. Annie has single-handedly battened down the hatches, boarded the windows and nailed the doors closed of a house in Mitchell’s mind – a house that looks strangely like the one in Bristol – providing a new immunity from the hurricane. It rages and moans and whines, increasing its strength and attempting to slip in through the non-existent cracks of the house.

They stay like this for a while. A real life snapshot of a moment in their undead lives. The hurricane completely subsides into nothing more than a persistent breeze – the kind that gently plays with leaves on a lazy autumn day. And after they draw gently back, roused from their melded position by George yawning blearily at them, Mitchell can only smile when he looks at Annie. She returns his smile, pressing their foreheads together. And Mitchell knows that whatever happens next, whatever is yet to come, he can deal with it. Because he has his ghost by his side, and that’s all that matters for the time being.


End file.
